


Hold My Gaze

by Servetolive



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Death, Horror, M/M, Necrophilia, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 02:44:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12379251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Servetolive/pseuds/Servetolive
Summary: Following a Dominion attack on the station, Garak has trouble locating the doctor. Originally written for Halloween 2010. Repost from LJ.





	Hold My Gaze

**Author's Note:**

> Original author's notes at the end.

Walking through the ashen haze of the Promenade, all Garak could think about were the words he had once shared with the doctor about how miserable Terok Nor's chilly temperature had made him.

It had been so easy to simply adjust climate of his quarters or to wear his clothes in layers and warm colors that would absorb the glaring lights of the station. The emergency lights, in their foreboding dimness, offered little protection from the almost biting chill that had consumed Deep Space Nine when the Dominion's final attack ruptured the life support system and crippled the master climate control. They did little to illuminate the place anyway; Garak's own visibility was limited to just a couple of feet in front of him, and beyond that, he could only make out the grainy silhouettes of uniformed personnel tasked with unearthing the bodies trapped beneath broken concrete and twisted bulkheads. 

He passed what was once Quark's bar, now a medley of shattered glass and warped metal, the ash accumulating in piles onto what stable surfaces remained like heaps of grey salt. A Bajoran medic, the lower half of her face obscured by a surgical mask, used her shoulder to slice her way past Garak, whose stride had fallen several paces behind the urgent footsteps of those around him. Everybody except for him had some sort of protection from the falling toxins.

The smell of burning alloys and plastics singed Garak's throat, and he coughed. Regardless, he had no intention of asking the short-handed medical team for a protective mask; they were obviously too preoccupied with their current tasks, and especially too busy to lend a hand to a Cardassian with a minor laceration to the temporal eye ridge.

He ignored the dull twinges of an oncoming migraine and tried to focus on any individual that appeared to wear a Starfleet uniform. So far, he had seen few that weren't stretched out on gurneys or lying on the ground, unconscious or dead.

The rest of the medical team was sent to assist a crew that had been working on freeing a group of Quark's patrons trapped under fallen debris. Their cries for help were still strong, but had dwindled in number. It may take days to release all of whom were entombed in the rubble around the station, and until then, Garak knew that he and the rest of the inhabitants would have to endure through some of their pleading voices until they died of dehydration or shock. 

He circled the Promenade three times, and had yet to find a familiar face--aside from Kira, whom he passed as she ran towards Quark's. They exchanged brief glances--she was upset, indeed; but there was something else. Her right eyebrow curved downwards in a half-frown that suggested something midway between worry and concealment. Obviously, she wanted to talk to him, but she gave him that strange look and otherwise ignored him.

Odo was seen giving orders to a security detail that was meant to sweep the station for intruders. Quark's wailing drifted in and out of every hallway. Garak allowed his voice to lead him to the infirmary, which was filled beyond its capacity. Patients spilled out onto the walkways as medics and nurses gave triage on the dust-covered ground. 

He knew that the doctor would be too busy to talk or even tend to a wound as trivial as his, but he needed to make sure that he was alright. He pushed past the bodies and squeezed through to the inside of the medical wing, craning his neck.

"Doctor Bashir!" He called out, straining his voice to rise above the chaos. Several members of the medical staff turned their heads sharply and gave him awkward, dirty looks--nothing like the upturned curl of the lip that spoke clearly of their hatred for his race, but wide-eyed glares of anger. They said nothing to him and continued with their work.

"... gone..." Quark's voice was the absolute loudest; he mourned the loss of his bar as he lay on a bio bed, blackened from a mixture of his singed clothes and skin. Large slivers of glass were jammed into his left ear. He stared wildly into the light above him and fidgeted so hysterically that the medics were having a difficult time remaining patient as they picked the shards out of his head with fine tweezers. Around them, nurses passed off bloodied tricorders to each other--few were functional after the EM pulse that preceded the attack blasted the electricity out of the station.

"... It's all gone...!"

And then the smell of burned flesh became too much. A sudden, disturbing wave of fear struck Garak right in his gut, and he turned to elbow his way out of the crowd.

Where was Doctor Bashir?

\--

When he had freed himself of the elbows and arms that came in different directions, he found himself on the other side of the influx. The sound of weeping women immediately drew his attention.

The identified fatalities lay in messy rows outside of the infirmary, lined up against the wall and encased in thick black vinyl bags tagged on the outside. The unidentified lay across the hall, but with loose white sheets draped over them so that relatives or fellow crew members could pull them back to see if they were recognizable. He hadn't seen them prior to entering the doctor's place of work, due to the immensity of the crowd.

Immediately, he crossed the path to the white sheets. There were thirteen of them, and he began with the far left. He took a deep breath to prepare himself: there was a good reason why these people could not be identified without the help of a functioning tricorder.

Slowly, he lifted the first sheet, which was saturated with black grease. The remains of the earring on the charred body's right ear told him that it was not Bashir.

The second, bloody sheet shrouded the headless remains of a Bajoran security officer.

The third was a Talarian child who had no visible injuries, but who had most likely died of asphyxiation from the smoke. His parents were also likely to be dead--there was no other reason why a child's body would remain unclaimed. His thoughts were confirmed by the presence of two more undamaged adult Talarian bodies, neither of which were identified by name.

Four bodies back, a Bajoran woman discovered the burned corpse to be a relative by examining the partially melted earring. Her shrill cries startled him and everyone else on the Promenade. She made a spectacle of herself by stomping her feet and throwing herself onto the ground; two male medics were required to drag her away, kicking and screaming before she finally fainted and became one of the many bodies trapped in the vortex of the headless infirmary. Anxiety set in, and Garak worked through the mostly Bajoran bodies quickly, nearly whipping off the shrouds and throwing them back on.

The final body was in the process of being identified by a co-worker and a medic. It was nobody he knew. Dismayed, he rubbed his temples and stared at the black bags ahead of him as a detail of four Bajoran medics piled them on top of a makeshift cart and wheeled them into one of the darkened wings.

Garak followed.

\--

“How many do we have again?” One of the medics asked through laborious breaths as they pushed the cart.

“I counted nine.”

“Nine? That’s all?”

“Don’t forget about that group outside of the infirmary that hasn’t been tagged. Have you seen some of them?” Garak was nearly ready to punch either of them in the mouth. He hoped this trip through the habitat ring wouldn’t last much longer; he wasn’t sure if he could stay benign while listening to the medics’ stoic banter.

“There’s gonna be more. Stop; this is it.”

The cart came to a slow halt outside of what used to be a small, localized armory back in Terok Nor’s glory days. Since coming under the care of the Bajorans, all such spaces were converted to house janitorial and climate control purposes. The leader of the detail wordlessly punched in a code, and together they disappeared into the room.

“Why aren’t these bodies bagged?” he heard one of them ask.

“We couldn’t find the body bags until about an hour ago. It’s not like we use them all the time.”

Garak stayed out of sight as they unloaded the bodies and reemerged; the highest ranking medic held a crumpled sheet of paper up against the wall as he logged their activities using a clunky, old-fashioned Bajoran graphite pencil.

“What’s that?” His junior asked as he tore off the bottom of the piece of paper and wrote something in large, alarming letters.

“Sealing off this room. We can’t keep piling bodies on top of each other.”

“What about the temperature in there?”

“What about it?”

“Shouldn’t it be refrigerated? The bodies will decay faster this way.”

The ranking officer paused to wipe the back of his hand across his brow. A distressing squint of the eyes passed through a crack in the mask of complacency he had been trained to wear in the events of such disasters.

“I didn’t notice it. You’re right, we should definitely reroute some of the energy reserves to reestablish habitat control for at least the morgues. Good observation, Idra. Frankly, I tried not to notice _anything_ while I was in there.” He attached an adhesive and pressed the notice firmly against the door, where it hung crookedly.

“... You saw him, didn’t you?” Garak tensed up, involuntarily.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s get back to the infirmary.”

“Roger.”

Garak pressed himself into the shadows and stayed that way, barely breathing, until an indefinite amount of time had passed since he had last heard footsteps leave the area. When he was comfortable enough, he left the crevice he had been hiding in, crossed the hall to the door and the number pad, and punched in the sequence--he’d memorized the tones of each dial that the detail had used for access.

**TEMPORARY MORGUE NO.1. 28; CAPACITY FULL. MAL ADEM, LT. 17:25:03**

The temperature was not as tepid as Garak had expected, but the young medic was definitely right: 20° Celsius was hardly an appropriate climate for a corpse. Next to his right foot were the pile of bodies that the detail had dumped, stacked on top of each other like sacks of grain.

Lined up against the eastern wall in a manner not dissimilar to the bodies on the Promenade were cadavers, white sheets hastily draped over them. Pairs of feet--all of different size and composition--jutted out from the bottoms with makeshift, paper identification tags wrapped around their left ankles like shackles.

Behind him, the door hissed closed. Garak started, twisting his head back to confirm that he hadn’t been discovered. It suddenly felt colder as the human concept of room temperature began to envelope him. It was nowhere near as frigid in this room than the station had been before the attack, but a chill seized him to his very core, and he quickly began to have doubts about his presence among these dead. His own personal superstitions and cultural beliefs tugged on his conscience to walk out.

_I shouldn’t be here. I’ve already done enough desecration for one day._

Cardassian death customs urge strongly against anyone but the family of the deceased viewing the body during its preparation for disposal. They found it to be insulting to both sides: the dead would be less than enthusiastic about being gawked at by a living counterpart, to be reminded of the fact that they had once cried, gasped for air, felt the warmth of another. Likewise, the living need not be reminded of their own mortality, lest it discourage them from their carrying out their worldly obligations efficiently.

With these thoughts fresh in his mind, Garak turned towards the door and was prepared to walk out of it, away from the fear that began to rise from his stomach and up into his throat. He became aware of the smell of still death, something similar to what he’d experienced in the infirmary, but less pungent--a sanitized, muted sting of burning organic matter and disinfectant. 

Garak feared being sick if he didn’t leave soon, but a quick glance around the room caught him, and he stayed firmly in place as he ran the consideration of what he had just seen through his head.

His pulse pounding in his ears, he turned slowly towards the row of feet, his eyes landing upon a pigment slightly darker than the others around it. Garak moved towards it slowly and peered over the right foot to prevent getting closer than necessary.

The tag on the ankle was written in the indistinct, quickly scribbled hand of a Bajoran. He squinted his eyes. Some of the text was a portion of the Bajoran alphabet that was mainly used for transliterations and onomatopoeia. Garak closed the space between him and the cadaver so that he could get a closer look at the writing.

A quiet, shuddering breath escaped his lips as he deciphered the handwriting.

**BASHIR JULIAN  
LIEUTENANT (STARFLEET)  
CAUSE OF DEATH: ASPHYXIATION/SHOCK  
TIME OF DEATH: 14:40 (APPROXIMATE)**

Many times, Garak’s eyes glazed over the details, and then he brought himself to look upon the slender outline of the body beneath the sheet. It ghosted delicately over the petite features of a face at the head of the body.

 **14:40.** He had been dead for nearly three hours. Why had it taken so long for him to find out?

The attack began at around 14:00. The last time Garak had glanced at the chronometer before the first explosion rang out, it read 13:57. The eruption of glass and plaster had sent Garak reeling back into the recesses of his shop, knocking him unconscious.

Garak did not gain consciousness until thirty minutes after the attack had ended, surrounded by the smoldering rubble of his shop, and some from the shop next door. Naturally, the computer didn’t respond when he asked for the time.

Is that where he had been while the doctor slowly suffocated to death as he fruitlessly fought for the lives of others? His body shook with increasing volatility as he glanced down at the left ankle again.

**CAUSE OF DEATH: ASPHYXIATION/SHOCK**

He should have been satisfied with the tag. There was no way anyone on the station could mistake the doctor for someone else. There was nothing more he needed to do here; he could turn away, put on his stone mask and assist the emergency teams in whatever way he could, and mourn in private later. Yet, terrible images of the doctor’s death bombarded him, and he found himself desperate to learn more about the details of his death. His mind fed him quick flash images of Julian being crushed beneath heavy debris, or losing a limb to exploding shrapnel as the walls were blasted open, gritting his teeth as he dragged himself along to assist injured civilians.

With a trembling hand, Garak took hold of the edge of the sheet that lay suspended between the ankles. He had to see for himself. He might have nightmares about Julian’s malformed body for the rest of his life, but the current state of things seemed to project a grim, if not brief future anyway.

The top of the shroud fell quite suddenly to reveal brown ringlets, and Garak squeezed his eyes shut. Any irrational hope that the body had been erroneously identified escaped him with a long, uneven exhale. He decided that he should remove the sheet quickly, rather than fall victim to the disturbing anticipation that had led him so far already.

Keeping his eyes closed, he whipped the sheet from the body, and peered out through his eyelids slowly, as if to filter the sight.

\--

The trauma to his body was not as severe as he had expected, but the urge to crumble before Julian’s naked, lifeless form nearly overwhelmed Garak, and he half-stumbled to the right side of his head.

He understood why the medics, without the precision of a working tricorder, were unsure of the cause of death. Second degree burns appeared to snake down his shoulders and mostly onto his back, the severity of which Garak could not see. The ravaged parts were dotted with grey and black pieces of his uniform that had become grafted into his flesh, which the medics could not remove without risk of mutilating the body further. His neck was also afflicted; the blistered skin crawled up to his right ear, but spared nearly the whole of his face, indicating that Julian had died face down. 

And, to his horror, Garak imagined it so: the doctor laying prone, gasping for air as the flames licked his back.

The worst part was perhaps the eyes, closed by only three-quarters. Garak made the utmost attempt not to look at them from an angle in which the hazel irises would be visible, as doing so by accident shook him so badly that he feared his heart would stop. But beyond the blanched skin of his neck and shoulders, Julian had no traces of pain or terror marking his face. The color had yet to completely leave the untouched parts of his flesh, and his mouth lay slightly open, a tiny aperture peering out from his lips. He looked merely to be asleep, a thought that Garak attributed to one of the many mornings in which he had woken up early, just to watch the young man breathe.

The corners of Garak’s eyes began to sting, and he was unable to stop himself from reaching out to him, letting the tips of his fingers ghost along his jawline.

“Oh...” Garak blinked, and dense tears spattered against the bio bed. His thumb passed lightly over the doctor’s bottom lip. It elicited no response.

“Julian,” he breathed, barely audible. He let his fingers follow the slope of his neck, gravitating towards the shoulder that somehow escaped damage. His throat tightened, and he rapidly approached the point at which he could no longer compose himself.

“Julian, my dear boy...”

Garak found Julian’s pliable hand and slipped his own into it, clutching at the spaces between his cool fingers as if willing him to return the gesture.

Through his tears, he gazed down at Julian’s long, motionless eyelashes, which under normal circumstances would ripple at the slightest disturbance; be it due to the the darting of his eyeball underneath the thin layer of skin, or Garak gently blowing air in his direction, only to watch the ethereal fluttering.

_This can’t be happening._

Finally, Garak succumbed to the violent shakes that wracked the whole of his body and pressed his lips against Julian’s, fiercely, as though he were trying to draw out of them the same warmth that he had extracted so many times. The constant stream of tears left both of their cheeks slick, and Garak could not help but emit vulnerable, weak cries between sobs.

Pained by the tension that accumulated in the tear-shaped depression at the center of his forehead, Garak dislodged himself from the doctor’s mouth and leaned against him. It couldn’t have been more than a week since he had last done so. Julian pleaded for it every time they were close to orgasm, to cross the last gap of physical connection that normally stood between Cardassian lovers. 

Even in death, Garak could not ignore the unique sensation of Julian’s soft, ridgeless skin pressing against the outer ridges of his spoon. Clearly, he could see himself bearing down into the young doctor, their foreheads pressed together, drowning in the glassy pools of his eyes.

The walls of his throat began to squeeze shut, and suddenly, it seemed as though the room would cave in on him. Sucking up the rest of his tears, Garak gave the hand a squeeze and mouthed one of few words he had taught the doctor in Kardasi; good-bye. It felt ill-spoken and grossly inappropriate to say out loud.   
Reluctantly, he removed his hand from the doctor’s and began to back away.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Julian’s head lulled to the side, a faint trace of a whisper escaping his pale lips. Paralyzed, he watched as the eyelashes fluttered, the eyelids themselves animated by the movement beneath them as they turned up, slowly.

And then he was met with those aquatic, moist eyes that he thought he would never see again.

_”Garak.”_

\--

His name had no more weight to it than a sigh.

“Garak,” Julian breathed again, blinking in regular intervals. The hint of a smile pulled at the corner of his lips. “You’re here.”

His mouth slightly agape, Garak raised a cautious hand to Julian, who clasped it weakly as it descended towards his cheek.

“Julian...” The Cardassian briskly closed the space that he made between himself and the bio bed when he was startled by Julian’s awakening. He knelt down so that he was level with the doctor’s eyes and squeezed his hand firmly. Tears returned to him.

“My dear, you must be in terrible pain.” Garak’s shaky voice stayed hushed, not wanting to further discomfort Julian.

The young doctor shook his head slowly, his thin lips spreading into a subdued grin. “No... I don’t feel a thing.”

“Do you remember what happened? The attack?”

Julian gave a slight shrug with his clean shoulder, and another shake of the head.

Struggling to compose himself, Garak swallowed the sobs and stood. As much as he wanted to stay and bask in this sudden turn of fortune, the station needed its chief medical officer. “Don’t move, Doctor. I’m going to inform the Major that you’re--”

When he made for the door, Julian pulled on his hand, refusing to release him.

“Garak, wait. Don’t leave.”

“But, the attack -- they need you.”

“ _I_ need you.”

Garak found the plea impossible to resist and returned to his side. Julian brought his hand up to the ridges of the Cardassian’s jawline. He closed his eyes as the soft pads of the doctor’s fingers came in contact with his lips. A single tear landed on a digit.

“Does it frighten you? To see me this way?” Again, Garak risked disintegrating at the airy sound of Julian’s voice.

“I couldn't fathom the idea, Doctor,” Garak responded, in spite of his violent trembling.

“Then do something for me, Garak.”

“Anything, my dear.”

“Touch me.”

A chill razed through Garak, and he let the words reverberate in the air before he leaned in to brush against Julian’s lips with his own.

And then the room became warmer as he absorbed his lover’s soft breaths, each becoming more rapid as Garak became deliberate with the movements of his mouth. His tongue slipped in, snaking against Julian’s and leaving trails of moisture in its path.

 _More,_ he could hear him moan, and before long, he was gazing down at the smooth contours of Julian’s body from above, unmarred and beautiful to him again.

Somewhere between him shifting to kneel in the center of Julian’s legs and wrap a hand beneath the small of the younger man’s back, the sheet slipped to the ground with a faint rustle, unnoticed.

The quaint sounds of pleasure that he so often longed to hear from the doctor increased with every bite of the lower lip and ever nip at the left ear lobe. He writhed beneath the tailor as Garak’s hand slid down from his back, rounded the curve of his backside and ran along the underside of his thigh, stopping at the crease of the knee.

When Garak hesitated with the second leg, Julian broke the kiss.

“Do it, Elim.”

Hovering above his face, Garak bore into the doctor’s eyes, seeing their appearance ripple, becoming at once both reflective and dull.

“I might...” Garak swallowed, pushing a painful feeling of doubt into remission.

“I might hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

It was always like this, Garak reminisced as he lifted Julian’s leg over his shoulder, with _him_ as the initiator. His lips pressed to the fleshy inside of the human’s knee, Garak scooped him up in his hands from underneath, bringing their hips closer, each movement becoming more frantic than the last.

His fingers grasped at the rim of his trousers, and at the slightest pause, the tip of his lover’s thumb traced the ridges of Garak’s chin.

“Don’t think about it, Garak.” The phrase was familiar to him, and accompanied by the warm, desirous glint in the doctor’s eye, Garak found himself free of any qualms that had clouded his mind before.

Without further misgivings, Garak freed himself from his pants and held the wet tip of his cock to Julian’s entrance, grinding against him slowly to draw out every breathless whimper.

“Yes,” Julian hissed through his teeth, closing his eyes and arching into the pressure. “That’s it...”

Garak drank in the sight of Julian’s face contorting with equal parts pain and anticipation, his tongue peeking out to wet his lips. In response to his arousal, his cock spasmed, emitting pre-ejaculate to lubricate its passage. The doctor gasped at the sudden movement.

 _“You always liked it this way, didn’t you, Doctor?”_ He heard himself whisper, the words plucked out of the folds of his memory. Julian moaned in assent as his right leg coiled around Garak’s waist, bearing down against the tailor as he pushed in an inch or so more. 

_”You, the passive-aggressor, the manipulator,”_ Garak purred, enveloped by the arid, encasing heat of his own quarters, the sheets beneath them heavy with the doctor’s sweat.

 _”Me? Manipulative?”_ He chuckled between laps at the fingers Garak had extended to keep him occupied during the preamble. _”How do you figure?”_

 _”By the gods,”_ the tailor half-snapped, closing his cold fingers around the doctor’s warm length, causing him to suck his breath in and twist a handful of fabric beneath his palms. _”You have no idea, do you? What you do to me with every sigh, every twitch of the mouth?”_ Garak edged in a little more, while at the same time giving Julian’s cock long pumps, squeezing slightly as he reached the base.

_“All day long, as I go about my business,” he continued, “I conjure up ways to completely destroy that complacency of yours.”_

He was delighted by how quickly Julian’s smug response to the accusation had been negated by these loud, uncontrollable cries, the almost violent arching of his back that spoke in volumes of what he wanted, far more effective than any words he cared to hear.

 _”G-Garak...”_ Julian moaned, his eyes closed and his head lulling to the side.

_”Are you going to take all of it today, Doctor?”_

The hint of challenge in his eyes, Julian wet his lips.

_”Do it.”_

Before the last syllable had even hit the air, Garak buried his cock almost completely into the slick channel, devouring Julian’s cries like fuel to go faster and deeper, and to transcend the limitations of their differing anatomies.

Quickly, Garak lost himself to the warmth, eager to encase himself inside of the human completely to the hilt.   
He wrapped his arms around Julian’s slender frame and held him close as he fucked him, feeling the caress of his own name burning across the scales of his shoulder.

The sharp, needling twinge of Julian’s teeth sinking into his neck ridges brought the tailor to climax. 

”Julian,” he sighed as the doctor’s head came to rest serenely against him.

_”I…_

He fought to retrieve the words from his memory, but they did not exist. He had never said them to Julian.

And then, startled by the loud, abrupt whirring of the climate control being activated, Garak was thrust back to the temporary morgue, surrounded by its grey walls and the still, shrouded forms.

 _Gods, no._ No.

He pulled away enough so that Julian’s head sank back, and Garak was met with his eyes—fully open. Unblinking. Dry. Lifeless.

He scrambled away from the body, dropping it soundly as if scorched by it. The meaty ‘thud’ reverberated in the room, closing in on Garak, suffocating him. Hastily, he stuffed himself back into his pants and gazed down at his dirty hands, oily from the charred residue of Julian’s back. 

_Ohgodsgodsgodsgodsgodswhathaveidone_

He backed away from the defiled cadaver, stopping when his back met the bulkhead. Nauseated by the sight of Julian’s body in disarray, Garak doubled over and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground.

 _whathashappenedtomegodsoh_ julian

The words assailed him from every corner of his psyche as he repeatedly slammed the back of his head into the wall. The temperature dropped several degrees in a matter of seconds, and Garak found himself sliding down the wall, hugging his knees and focusing on the uneven angle that Doctor Bashir’s feet lay in.

“Well, the answer to that is simple, Elim,” he said aloud to himself, his teeth chattering violently. 

“You have gone quite mad.”

Garak did not move from that position, but instead pondered on his last words. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would get out of the situation mentally intact until the faint tap of black boots were at his side.

He looked up, warmed instantly by the token quixotic smile.

_Get up, Garak._

He took the hand offered, numb to the stiffening of his fingers.

\--

It wasn’t until days later, when body disposal and funeral rites could finally take place, that the control room was re-opened. The major was called away from her duties immediately, already in a foul mood.

Kira stared at the scene from the threshold of the door. A million thoughts jumped around in her head as her eyes drew lines between the unnerving look of serenity etched onto Garak’s frozen face and the peculiar state of the doctor’s corpse, none the least bit appropriate to say out loud.

“Clean it up,” she said curtly. The medics murmured affirmatives and ducked past her. “Make sure that the doctor is laid to rest immediately.”

“And get rid of _him._ ” She gestured to the Cardassian, the last word accentuated with a curl of the upper lip.

She turned, having every intention to forget about what she saw—her eyes didn’t linger on any one subject for too long. It was possible.

Swiveling back on her heel, she pulled her lips tight and raised a threatening finger.

“And not a word about this to anyone. _Anyone._ Am I understood?”

Chilled more by the shaking in the major’s voice than the nature of their task or the temperature of the room, the medics acknowledged her orders and got to work, making every attempt to avoid her eyes.

“Yes, sir.”

**Author's Note:**

> a) The entire fic was written while listening to Bitter:Sweet's "A Moment" on repeat for hours each time I sat down to write this. The title comes from that song.  
> b) It took an agonizing two and a half weeks to write this, with deepfall holding my hand the whole way. Between all of the research/looking up words in the dictionary and thesaurus/dry-heaving/wondering if I should totally stop, this risked not being finished. There were times where I would literally write one or two lines a day, and an occasion or two where deepfall had to jump in and give me a few lines for inspiration.  
> c) For all of you morticians/forensic pathologists out there, yes I know that there are some discrepancies. I did the best I could with accuracy. Trust me, if I attempted to make this 100% scientifically accurate, **it never would have gotten done.**


End file.
